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Dreamliner's First Flight With New Battery Goes Flawlessly

The 787 Dreamliner flies again, though briefly, on Monday as Boeing tests a redesigned lithium-ion battery system that it believes eliminates the risk of a fire.

Photo: Boeing

Boeing's first flight of a 787 Dreamliner using a redesigned lithium-ion battery system was utterly uneventful, which was the best possible outcome.

Monday's flight was a conventional "functional check flight" performed on all new aircraft prior to delivery, but there was much more than usual at stake. Boeing has for weeks scrambled to address a battery issue that has grounded all 50 Dreamliners worldwide since January, when a battery caught fire aboard a 787 at the gate in Boston. A week later, a second Dreamliner making a domestic flight in Japan made an emergency landing after the crew received messages in the cockpit indicating a battery had overheated and failed.

Boeing has joined experts from the National Transportation Safety Board and their counterparts in Japan in investigating the fires. Although they have not determined the root cause, the NTSB believes a short circuit within a single cell of the 63-pound battery sparked the fire in Boston. Boeing has responded with a plan to modify the lithium-ion batteries by adding protection between each of the individual lithium-ion cells. The airplane manufacturer also plans to subject the batteries to more rigorous testing and install them in heavy-duty steel boxes that vent outside the aircraft. It says those measures eliminate the risk of battery fires and provide safeguards against future incidents.

Boeing used a production Dreamliner for the 2-hour, 9-minute flight over the coast of Washington and Oregon. The airplane was the 86th built, and had been delivered to the Polish airline LOT. It was stranded in Chicago when Dreamliners worldwide were grounded in the wake of the two battery incidents, which officials have called "thermal runaway."

Boeing says the two pilots and four crew members reported Monday's flight was uneventful.

With the first flight of the system completed, Boeing says it will analyze data from the flight before ground testing and a final certification flight with the same airplane.

“There is a series of laboratory, ground and flight tests that have or will take place to complete the certification plan,” Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel told Wired. “We are not providing [more] detail on sequencing of tests.”

Monday’s flight appeared to be a typical functional flight check, complete with a rejected takeoff test during the airplane’s first time down the runway. Once the airplane accelerated to takeoff speed, the pilots deployed the spoilers and thrust reversers as they applied brakes and came to a stop on runway 16R at Paine Field. The pilots then turned the airplane around and departed runway 34L (pictured above) before heading west to the coast.

Minutes after the 787 departed, the National Transportation Safety Board tweeted a link to a press release from earlier this month regarding the agency’s interim report on its investigation of the 787 incident in Boston where one of the batteries briefly caught fire. The message also mentioned the forum the NTSB will be hosting on lithium-ion batteries next month. Last week the safety board was critical of Boeing’s announcement that it expects to complete the certification testing of its new battery design in the coming weeks.